The Times Magazine - UK (2021-02-20)

42 The Times Magazine

he village of Balcombe in West Sussex

is most famous for its appearance in

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

But up a track, in a woodland, it is

also where Kemps House was built – a

grade II listed building that dates back

to the 1660s.

It is home to Alex Willcock, 56, who for

the past 16 years has rented it and lives there

with three of his five children, who range from

11-26. It is also where he started the furniture

brand Maker & Son with his eldest child, Felix

Conran, 26, who is currently based in New

York. Felix is Willcock’s son from his first

marriage to Sophie Conran, who runs her

own homeware business, and is the grandson

of the late Sir Terence Conran.

Unsurprisingly, Maker & Son’s furniture

recalls the modernist aesthetic that Conran

senior became so famous for. It champions the

same unflinching attention to detail, simplicity

and good taste, which goes some way to

explaining why it has become a £15 million

success story only three years since its launch.

Conran, who died five months ago at 88,

was a generous mentor to Willcock, who spent

nearly a decade of his career working for

the former, first as his buying and marketing

director, then as creative director of the group.

He learnt a lot from the design guru, he tells

me, as did many of Conran’s design protégés

who worked for him from a young age.

“A month before Terence died, I got

together on Zoom some of the senior design

team from Conran and we made a film

for him. Russell Pinch [of the Pinch design

group] said it had been the apprenticeship

of a lifetime. And that since meeting Terence,

everything in life had become more expensive

because he introduced you to beautiful wine

and food. He had this real appreciation of the

beauty of simple things.”

Today, the Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti

is playing in Willcock’s home as part of the

brand’s latest campaign. The sound of Ernest

Bloch’s Prayer, arranged for a string quartet, fills

the main sitting room where Twenties Russian

constructivist art hangs on the walls and Felix’s

pendant shades, made from bentwood, are a

focal point. The room is also filled with several

of the brand’s roomy “vegan” sofas.

In a sitting room there is more artwork by

David Band and Rose Shuckburgh, a family

friend and Laura Ashley’s granddaughter.

A miniature Thonet wooden chair, an early

prototype, sits on a side table designed by Felix.

Kemps House, built by the architect John

Kemps as his family home, feels grander than

its size might suggest, with large sash windows

and high ceilings. So inviting, that until Covid

hit, the house doubled as a showroom of sorts.

Like Conran, Willcock is well versed in

understanding the ingredients of a seductive

lifestyle tableau: candlelight, weighty table

linen, food à la paysanne and the right music.

The violin is an instrument that Benedetti

and Willcock have in common, but it also

explains how Willcock escaped his “very

ordinary childhood” growing up in Maldon,

Essex. One of four brothers, at the age of

12 he won a music scholarship to Eton.

“It was the most remarkable place, but

it was also remarkably cruel and my parents

had no experience whatsoever of boarding

schools,” he says. Willcock found solace in

the violin and was also given the keys to the

design and woodwork studios. From Eton he

T

A yellow Maker & Son

armchair. Left: entrance

to Kemps House, a grade II

listed building dating from

the 17th century

FIONA WALKER-ARNOTT